Donald Trump, whose loyalists have stuck with him through good times and bad, may have finally gone too far by accepting Qatar’s “great gesture” of a luxury jet.
Some of the president’s most high-profile supporters, including online media figures like Ben Shapiro and Laura Loomer, have broken with Trump over the $400 million plane from Qatar’s royal family, a regime critics say is terror-supporting and has sanctioned the murder of American citizens.
“I’m hoping that it’s not true,” Loomer told Politico on Monday. “If the initial reports are factual, I think it’s concerning.”
“Qatar is not our friend,” she said, adding she believes America under Trump has gotten a little too cozy with the oil-rich West Asian country.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican, said the jet passes neither the eye nor the smell test.
“There’s just a lot of foreign policy decisions and I think people will think that it could possibly sway your decision-making process,” Paul said.
The president doesn’t see what the fuss is all about. Asked about it Monday at a White House signing ceremony, Trump ridiculed the reporter from ABC News who posed the question.
“You should be embarrassed asking that question,” Trump said. “They’re giving us a free jet. I could say no, no, I want to pay you a billion or $400 million or whatever it is. Or I could say ‘thank you very much.’”
Trump insisted the jet was not a gift to him but to the U.S. Department of Defense. According to ABC News, Qatar’s royal family offered the luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet to replace Air Force One, which would then be donated to Trump’s presidential library foundation for his use after leaving office.
To many, it reeks of bribery. Trump blamed American defense contractor Boeing for taking “so long to build a new Air Force One.”
“I think it’s a great gesture from Qatar,” he said. “I appreciate it very much. I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer.”
Perhaps no commentator was harder on Trump’s decision to accept the jet from Qatar than Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro, who characterized the president’s behavior as “shady,” saying it “undermines his agenda and credibility.”
“Even if it’s not criminal, it’s bad optics,” Shapiro said, adding that the move is “political poison.”
He noted the outcry that would’ve followed had Hunter and Joe Biden been involved instead of the Trumps: “Conservatives would be screaming,” Shapiro said.
CNN media analyst Brian Stelter reported the controversy over the jet constitutes the biggest schism between Trump and his supporters during the president’s second term.
“This is the biggest break that I’ve seen in the first four months of Trump’s return to office between his pro-Trump propaganda machine, those pro-Trump stars that are always supporting him, and the president,” Stelter said Tuesday.
Loomer said she is sympathetic to the president not wanting to burden taxpayers with the cost of a new Air Force One.
“But it’s going to complicate foreign policy about the designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, which was promised and undelivered in the first Trump administration,” she said. “It’s kind of this elephant in the room as Trump goes to the Middle East.”
But do personalities like Loomer and Shapiro speak for MAGA? The outcry from the everyday Trump supporter has yet to manifest.
“Not like they own Donald just because they gift him a Boeing,” wrote one Trump fan on X. “Let the man cash in a nice gesture.”
